“I made it” – Peter at Run Melbourne 2014

The alarm clock rings at 7:30am on Sunday morning. Sze Wey is stirring. I, on the other hand, have to get up and get COFFEE. I can function without coffee. But not as well. Not when I need that extra zip. And boy do I need the “extra zip” this morning. Reason – we are participating in Run Melbourne. You might remember we did a run earlier in the year. It was 5.5kms but Sze Wey did not learn anything from it other than we have to do another one. And not just another run. It has to be a LONGER RUN. So this time round, I am facing a FULL ten kilometres of bitumen. Its going to be ugly.

My only condition of agreeing to this was that it must not start any earlier than 8:00am. I remember full well last years 10km run in the Melbourne Marathon starting very early. To my dismay, she chuckled wickedly and said I better start training. Caught in the crosshairs, I had no choice but to sign up. So, after many weeks, at 9:15am this morning, we will be braving the Melbourne winter. I will be in my old running gear. Numbers pinned to the front of my top with a timing tag on my shoelace. There will be thousands at the start line. The air horn will sound. And once again, we will be running . . .

Some time later . . . . . a lot later.

I made it. I started by typing “We did it” but then changed my mind. I’m going to stick with I made it. At the halfway mark, I felt I was doing ok. But at 3km’s to go, I started to get a stitch on my right. It was not crippling but it was not going away either. At the 8km mark, I started feeling a blister on my left toe. I thought to myself, this could get bad. (Peter’s full of excuses isn’t he! — Sze Wey). Then when the organizers of the route put in a hill in the last kilometre, I said this is REALLY bad. I slowed to a crawl and barely made it to the top. I felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my head. I remember thinking, next time I want to check the route before agreeing to anymore runs. I plodded along as much as I could. The finish line couldn’t come any sooner. I was completely spent. So like I said, I’m sticking with I made it.

PS: Sze Wey found the first half tough but overcame that and finished well. She now has a PB of 63mins 8 secs. Goodonya Sze Wey!

Post navigation

One thought on ““I made it” – Peter at Run Melbourne 2014”

Congratulations! My wife has a dream to run someday ¼ Marathon. Last autumn she trained few time with shorter trips, but now winter prevents training. I am not runner; I am walker as my late father was. Me and my wife love daily walking varying from 6 to 9 km. Last year I walked nearly 1300 km. It is not so much, but the weather here prevents daily walking. For example today we had -23 °C and we decided not to walk, because the wind was also hard.

My daughter loves cycling and running. In 2013 she visit our town Mikkeli and participated the Mikkeli Marathon. I would love to show to You my photos from my daughter’s competition. Remove my link, if You do not accept my link.